From Promise to Progress: The Next Breakthroughs for a Changing World | Goals Lounge

Hi, everyone. Excellencies, distinguished guests, colleagues, partners, and friends, a very warm welcome to Goals Lounge. There is always something special about this particular gathering. It is so wonderful to see our SDG advocate family and so many partners and friends committed to building a more sustainable future. As advocates for the United Nations Secretary-General's Sustainable Development Goals, your leadership and commitment continue to raise ambition and inspire action around the world. Our conversation today is anchored in a simple but urgent question: How do we move from promise to accelerated progress? Ultimately, progress is measured by what people can see and feel in their daily lives, jobs, opportunity, resilience, and their hopes for the future. What we need to do now is to step up delivery. We are grateful for the leadership of our SDG Advocate Co-Chairs, Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados and Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez of Spain, and for the commitment of all our advocates. We also thank Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed for her steadfast leadership and unwavering commitment to advancing the SDGs. So thank you for being on part of this journey. And today, to guide our conversation, it's my great pleasure to welcome a longtime friend of the Goals Lounge, Sharon Bryce-Pease, United Nations Bureau Chief for the South African Broadcasting Corporation, SABC. Sherwin, the stage is all yours.

Thank you. Good to see you, good to see you. Thanks so much, Anne-Marie, and good afternoon, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. As she said, I'm Sherwin Bryce-Peas. I'm a journalist here at the United Nations. I work for SABC News, and my beat is the United Nations. We have some incredible leaders from business and government with us today, and we're going to ask them some big questions, and we certainly hope that they will give us some big answers and responses in return. And if you're not familiar or haven't directly experienced the impacts of the El Nino phenomena that is creating record-breaking rising temperatures around the world, I dare say, welcome to the Gull's Lounge. It tends to get very warm in here, so we will try to keep the conversation cool. To start us off, let me invite to the stage two leaders who are committed to advancing the role that business can play in contributing to and creating a better, healthier, and more just world for all. Founder and CEO of Chobani, Hamdi Ulukaya. And the president of Microsoft, Brad Smith. Hi, Brad, good to see you. Have a seat, have a seat. So I'll start with a question to you both, and maybe Brad, I'll start with you. The world and the role of business within it is changing extremely fast, particularly as new technologies reshape economies, societies, and the way people work and the way people live. How should the role of corporations evolve in response to that? And what new responsibilities must come with their growing influence?

Well, when you think about the theme for today, you know, from promise to progress. What I would say is I don't think the promise or potential of business has ever been greater, but there's also the peril that needs to be assessed as well. Every day it's striking to see what those of us in the technology sector and in all kinds of sectors across the economy can contribute. And we'll talk more about that, but the SDGs, I think, provide such a wonderful framework for it. When you look at what technology can do to address something like food insecurity with the power of satellite imagery, more data, AI, the ability to forecast, it can save people's lives. But at the same time, I think we need to recognize that AI can also, in effect, be turned against people. It can be used by governments. It can be used intentionally or just inadvertently by the private sector. And so I think it creates a much greater responsibility. It requires leaders to think more broadly. It requires the kinds of conversations inside businesses to make sure that we're not only spotting the issues, but thinking them through and deciding them with the right kind of judgment, grounded, I will say. in the body of international law, the values that things like the human rights instruments of the world reflect.

So let me just quickly follow up with you. I mean, you said at this cross section, right, between AI and its advance, the advances we're seeing in tech, and also your responsibilities as an SDG advocate to the Sustainable Development Goals. I wonder what that intersection looks like from your vantage point. The Secretary General has said there are three existential threats facing the world today. It's inequality, climate and artificial intelligence. Do you agree with him or is that hyperbolic?

Well, I don't know that one needs to say that something is existential to agree that they all are extraordinarily important. So let's just start there. And I do think that they all matter greatly. I think we live in a world where now increasingly technology, AI itself, is reflected in the great inequality of the world. If you think about the world in which we live, I would argue that the divide between North and South is the biggest and the longest lasting divide that we've had. And I would argue that it was created perhaps most fundamentally by disparate access to technology, namely electricity. But now we're seeing, and we just released a report yesterday, it shows that in the global north, roughly 29% of the population has access to and is using AI, and in the global south, it's 16. 29 to 16. If you look at the growth rates, by this time next year, it'll be two to one. And if you think about what it means to close that, well, you have to start with the recognition that 700 million people in the world don't have access to electricity. 2 billion don't have access to the internet. 4 billion don't have access to digital skills. This is a world of one half and another half. And I could go through climate and the implications both for AI and the impact of AI, both good and bad, or the potential risk that AI could pose if it's not controlled properly. You know, the truth is being an SDG advocate is a help. It gives somebody like me broader access to, you know, all the people in this room and the contacts, the insights that you bring. But regardless of whether I'm an SDG advocate, I better be thinking about these things. And so should my colleagues in other tech companies.

I will tell you this, the Security Council is convening a meeting tomorrow afternoon, I believe, and some of the interlocutors will be the CEOs of Anthropic, of OpenAI, and of course, the chair of the independent panel that was appointed by the SG. So let me get back to the first question, Hamdi. How should the role of corporations evolve in response to the changing environment in terms of tech?

Good to be with you. Good to be here. So this AI thing takes me away from making yogurt. I like to think about this. I am so confused, I got to tell you. I mean, you listen to one place, this foreign thing from the space coming in, it's going to hit the world, and something dramatic is going to happen. And then some of them is this magic is coming to the world and everything's gonna be beautiful and something in between. What are we looking at? I am a, you know, I'm not, not of course Microsoft and what Brett does and complexity and technology and the futuristic thinking that they're doing in their campuses and the brain power. We are involved with communities and, you know, collecting milk from the farmers and we are exposed to their worries. Right? Is it going to rain tomorrow and how the corn is going to be and- And when's the diesel price gonna come down? And when the diesel is gonna come down. These are real things. And you're exposed to, you know, the labor and immigration, undocumented workers. And if my workforce is going to be interrupted and my livelihood is going to be, you know, here or not tomorrow before this meter coming from the space. These are real challenges every day you're looking at it. From my operation, the ingredients come to the factory, and you work with real people and turn them into a product that you send across the country, and people make it part of their diet. And every day you worry about, how do I do this in a way we can get into it in a bit.

In a sustainable way.

In a sustainable way. Longevity. And you think about, how can I give a little bit of a comfort from my supplier side of things and saying, tomorrow should be OK, and the farmers and others. And then you're saying to the-- anything in between that this factory is going to be here, I'm going to make the yogurt, and the workers, their well-being is going to be OK. You have to worry about those things. And then you read things from the intelligence people put out there that there is this AI. And how do you live today and the distance tomorrow or whatever the further is, and how do you make the you know, decisions every day.

Right, yeah.

That the important topics, like the people and communities and output of the factory in a good way, and your healthiness of your business is okay, but at the same time, you prepare what's gonna happen tomorrow.

So you're not essentially thinking, how is AI gonna make this business more efficient? You're thinking, how is this AI going to affect my workforce? It's the human dimension.

I am going between absolute negative and absolute positive every day. So you're quite the pendulum. Trying to be prepared for it every day, right? So if one somehow the technology comes in and say, your fillers-- and I'm just talking about real business that we are involved. Your fillers don't need people anymore. But there are people in there. What does that mean?

By people, by the person.

No, somebody said, well, if AI is implemented, you're going to need more people. That's an argument. People are saying in high-attended conferences. But I think here's where I find my comfort. The businesses are going to be matters, even whatever happens, good or bad. The impact of the business is going to be significant. The second dimension is if we continue to keep well-being of whoever we surrounding our businesses with. For us, it's the farmer, the land, workers, factory workers, whatever it is. And you say, these are extremely important of the ingredients of my business, whatever it is. And then however the world changes, I'm going to adopt it in a way during this transitional time. that not only maintain the healthiness of my business, but healthiness of the surrounding, because tomorrow we are going to be dependent on. I think the real call should be-- and these calls have been made-- is how do we, a business community, become super responsible, not just because how we can make this cheaper without less people, is how do we transit through this time in a healthy way. That's where I spend an enormous amount of time. But at the same time, we have to train ourselves that this amazing technology that is coming through, that how it can be impactful on our business in a way. Can I try a culture in a fastest way that reduces my waste? Can I implement this in a strawberry field that the water usage is responsibly you know, done, and then strawberries waste goes from 40% to, let's say, 10% in the land. You save it. There's a enormous amount of openness to this. What I worry about is not actually what happens to people, really, in the end. I think we are going to figure this out. What I worry about is chaotic transitioning that what happens between then and in the end.

Maybe you two should have more conversations. I mean, I saw you listening intently to that response. I wonder what you make of it, Brad.

Well, I think, first of all, it shows that there's a lot more in common between an AI technology and a yogurt company than what most people might imagine. Because you have to innovate, we have to innovate, you manage people, we manage people, you have a supply chain, we have a supply chain, we both need to meet the needs of our customers, and frankly, we're both committed to doing it in a responsible way, that's why we're involved in this effort. One of the points that you just made is about the transition. I don't think that anyone can know for certainty what's on the other side, how long the transition will take, what its nature will be, Because no one has a crystal ball.

And whether you can control that transition.

And the future is not within any single company's or single government's control. I mean, I think that's a reality. I think we can all learn from the past. We can all study where we are in the present. And I think we can all do our best to get ready and guide people through it. We do know that some jobs will go away, some new jobs will be created. Most people's jobs will change in some way or another, and we're gonna have to help people through this. And that means equipping them with the opportunity to learn new skills, use new technology, but also frankly, remember that human values are timeless in ways that technology is not. Human judgment, maybe even more important in a world where humans are managing AI than just other people. And yeah, I think sustaining that, and frankly, one of the biggest opportunities and frankly biggest challenges for business, I think right now is the world's so fragmented. I would argue that the United Nations has never been more important since it was founded, but it's also perhaps more challenged right now. than it has ever been. And it will take coalitions of the willing that transcend borders. What are the kinds of organizations that transcend borders? Businesses, nonprofits, labor organizations, religious organizations. If we don't find ways to band together and work together to support these international institutions, then we're all just mostly going to be reading about the news that is created by governments that disagree with each other. We have to, I think, find a way to keep the flame burning for these values that created the United Nations in the first place.

So, Hamdi, let me bring you back in and ask you how you're going to keep the flame burning, right? You have built a very special business model around the idea that creating opportunity for people can also create value for business. You've touched on that in your initial response. Was there a moment when you realized that the way you wanted to build your business was bigger than perhaps the business itself?

Yeah.

I appreciate your thoughtfulness.

Yeah, I think this part is, there is the history of starting something away from cameras and conversations and coming together in this way. in ours is happens in a rural communities where the farms are. And in there, you're distance from everything. So you have time, for me, it was small town, South Edmonston, four hours from here. And somebody said at the time, 60% of the people in that community has never been to New York City. It is a very close, most beautiful rural community. And basically, I might be the only person had an accent up there, other than Frank, who had a Sicilian accent.

Let me correct you. Everybody has an accent. Yours was different from mine.

Mine was different, right. But what I'm saying is that in there, when I came to that factory, it was closed by a large company. And the way the company left-- and I say that because it's very relevant. I think there's more stuff like this is going to happen. And the company left after 70, 80 years, the way that they left, it remind me, you know, when I grow up in Turkey and in responsibility of the business, but how do you abandon a community, really, after 70, 80 years? You don't even come to say goodbye, you know? I mean, the contribution of the generations of that town into that business is enormous. But of course, the responsibility comes also in the continuity of a culture of the company, you say, you know what, I gotta say goodbye. OK, the things can close. But it's just a matter of something get closed. That means the emotions get impacted. The children get impacted. The traffic on the road get impacted. Beer consumption has gone up. Worries has gone up. The house painting frequency has gone down. The value of the house has gone down. These are all automatic impacts on somebody's making decision high up in some sky building. Right, without the means to buy. So if you don't have that depth of understanding of every single business decision you make and what kind of impact it makes on people, you're never going to make the right decision. It's just spreadsheet, you look at it, yeah, it makes sense, cross, and then that. Now, these things can happen. It has to happen. It might happen. It's in the world of business, it does happen. But how do you manage that thing? For me, I started that and I said, can I work in every dimension that in my control, this kind of emotions never come to the surface. Because if I know it, how do you sleep after? How do you build a business on that one? So I think the crux point of what we're looking at technology, as exciting as it is, and assigned to enormous amount of dollar signs, this technology is assigned with enormous amount of dollar signs. But what I worry the most is there is a words and conversations happens, but it's this impact on general public and people. But I don't think the distance from that understanding of the real people experience is not put into the system. There's big catastrophe. But if this happens in a really big level, enormous level, you have to understand people are not just going to sit there and take this just like that. It's not going to happen because the few is generating this technology, few enormously excited about the technology. I'm not bringing anybody. It's enormous amount of innovation. And then the dollar signs assigned to this enormous, but the worry level of the general public is deepens and deepens in every day. And then when you come to the center of this, and I know it because I'm in the field, at some point, the worry, even before the impact happens, this worry can create an enormous amount of negative energy that could be extremely destructive. And I've seen some sign of it. For me, the minute I assigned-- and I don't brag about this because I say it Because I don't see any other way how we can spread this wealth to more people. It's the minute in 2016 that I assigned certain percentage of the companies, every single employees in the company. And I said, every single person who is in this can benefit of success of this. Maybe there's a way that we can never allow this to happen.

So that inclusivity matters.

And that is the moment you understand that this is not just the success, it's actually understanding that this is bigger than that.

I mean, let's continue the thread, right, Brad? At Microsoft, you have the challenge and opportunity of translating values into action at an enormous scale. What should leaders be thinking about differently today if they want to build businesses that deliver growth? while also creating opportunity and contributing to sustainable development? I think it feeds into exactly what Hamdi is speaking about.

Well, I would say that there's three things worth thinking about. The first is, look, when markets work well, they scale to a greater degree than any other force that we have on the planet, more than a single government, more than a nonprofit. Markets can bring technology or products to more people in more places than any other force that we know. They don't always go far enough. Look at electricity. That's markets did not bring electricity to Africa. Neither did governments. The fact that you have big tech companies like our own, you know, with a plan to spend $50 billion to build out AI infrastructure in the global South and in the process bring connectivity and electricity with it is a good thing. But Even so, there are many things that markets by themselves don't reach, and that's when you need new types of partnerships. For example, you need to make sure that AI is accessible in all the languages that the world speaks. Look at yesterday, the Gates Foundation, Microsoft, Google, the UK government, 60 partners came together to make AI accessible in 50 African languages that will reach 47 countries. That's a great example of business and nonprofits working together. So you look at how you can fill in the gaps that the market's not reaching. I also think the market can go too far or the market can go too fast. And I think that is also one of the questions of, The month, the year, even literally the day, tomorrow in the Security Council. What should a company do if it thinks that it's going faster than the speed of safety? What should a company do if it thinks everyone should slow down? Well, I would say it should stop running so fast. We all have an individual responsibility to produce products that are safe. Any day that there's a risk that we're gonna create an unsafe product, We have the first responsibility, whether it's yogurt or AI, or in our case, two years ago, we moved 30% of our engineers off of the products we were creating because we needed to address cybersecurity weaknesses. We slowed our product development down. And then I think we also need to ask, where does government fit? Where do third parties fit? So I would just say, let's use markets for all the good that they can offer. Let's fill in the gaps when they don't go far enough. Let's make sure there's not only self-restraint, but the right kind of checks and balances.

But doesn't they need to then be broad consensus that if you're going to take your foot off the accelerator, everybody else does, because the entire endeavor is being framed as some sort of race and a race to lose?

Absolutely not. Look, I always say to people who work at Microsoft, 10, 20, 40 years from now, when they retire, they look back at where they work, I want them to be proud that they were part of this company. And what I'm describing is not just a moral or ethical responsibility to do the right thing, it is a legal responsibility under the law as it exists today. If a company knowingly produces a product that is unsafe, there's called product liability law. that should remind them no one ever won a product liability case by saying, "I know that my automobile was unsafe, but my competitor was gonna make an unsafe one too, and I didn't wanna lose market share." That is not an acceptable response. And I think we should all, this is not just values, this is common sense. No one should be producing an unsafe product. Would you produce unsafe yogurt because your competitor was gonna beat you to the market with unsafe yogurt?

No, no.

And let's just remember, you know what's right next to yogurt in the grocery store typically? Milk. Look at milk. I mean, everybody talks about how regulation can slow innovation, and it can. And we should be incredibly mindful of that. But go to the milk counter today, you've got skim milk, whole milk, chocolate milk, almond milk, half the milk I can't even completely understand, but I'll tell you what it is, it's all safe milk. It's all safe yogurt, because we have agricultural standards, we have agricultural inspectors. If you go back to the 1930s, there was contaminated milk, there was unsafe milk, there were people who got sick because of milk. No one goes into the grocery store and worries that if they pick the wrong carton, the child is going to get sick.

I don't know if I agree with this analogy with the AI and technology. I mean, plus they are not all the same taste. Some of them don't taste so good. But the point is, look at what technology has done to social media and what it did to our children. I was going to-- I mean, the dollar signs is everywhere. I love Brett, and he has been-- in a right side of the messaging when it comes to the world of technology. But as much as help and improvement has happened in our society through the technology, there is an enormous amount of distraction because the model is, if I can keep you on a FaceTime or Instagram or whatever, TikTok, whatever it is, I'm going to make you watch more of the ad and that's going to make me more money. And that's the model, this is the financial model. The problem is with all of this. is all of these amazing technologies supported by making money, right? And that's it. It's just simple as it is. And when that is--

Capitalism at its best.

Yeah. And when that it is, it could be good and it could be as destructive, right? I have to generate-- I make it free so you can to be there, but I gotta make the money from somewhere else. I mean, when you do that, then you have this. Now, if you could create a security on this, of course, there's a enormous of conversation has to happen around this. But to me, to me is, is, is absence of that is costing people life. Like, look at simply social media, what's doing to the people, right? There's enormous amount of connectivity is happening, but at the same time, like look at the, you know, uh, suicide rate among the young people. Look at what is that, the mental wellbeing. And then more and more information coming out of how companies knew about these things and done nothing about it at the same time. Where in the world did you close one eye? I mean, as long as we don't come together and talk the real **** we are going to go towards-- sorry, did I say ****? I'm sorry.

No, no.

Yes. We are going towards a distractive environment where it can cause enormous amount of damage to humanity. And the point I'm making about this technology is it's so powerful. It's so powerful, I don't think that people understand that enormous amount of impact it will make, or the fear that could create among people, and how people will react against it. you don't want this improvement to stop. In some cases, disease can be eliminated, poverty can be eliminated, right? The science could be so advanced that maybe life expectancy can go up. It could be impactful that the level between the children in, you know, some rich neighborhoods in the United States and the poor neighbors in Africa could be similar flatness because of the excess of education. The enormous amount of potential of this thing knowledge is so enormous, can it be poisoned with ambition of how much money can we make?

So it needs guardrails. I'm going to give you the final word. Our time is almost up. So I mean, this is a great conversation where you don't even need a moderator. Please, Brad.

Well, I would say two things. First, people need to stop and think. And when people think, especially when they're informed by a lot of outside voices, they're much more likely to make, I think, a wise and right decision. The last thing I would say is, And as we think about the power of AI, the risks we need to address, I think we all can fall into the mistake of expecting the model companies to do everything by themselves. That's never the way it works. Think about something we all know. There came a point in time when cars could go so fast that they could have accidents in the intersection. What did we do? Well, thankfully, somebody said we should have a stop sign. We should have a stop sign. We should have a stoplight. We should pave the roads. We should put guardrails. We should have speed limits. We should have police who police the streets. And then we should put a speedometer in the car. The only thing the car maker actually changed about the car in that analogy was the speedometer. And it's not just the companies that make the models, it's the cloud operators like ourselves, where it's deployed, it's the companies that create technology that controls AI agents. It's a whole ecosystem. The one thing that is going to be missing in the Security Council tomorrow is a voice from the part of the industry that doesn't make the model. As long as you only focus on the models themselves, we will never solve this problem.

Brad, Hamdi, delighted to have this conversation. Thank you for being so instructive. And it's nice to have opposing, maybe not always opposing, views, but maybe we can forge some consensus moving forward. Ladies and gentlemen, Brad and Hamdi, thank you so much. Thank you so much. Very nice to meet you. Very nice to meet you. All right, deep breath, everybody. If business as we transition, could I? I can go. If business has a role to play in advancing solutions to the world's most pressing challenges, then the next question is how development finance can help bring those solutions to scale. Global crises are deepening and the SDG financing gap has surpassed, wait for it, 4 trillion US dollars. We have consensus that something needs to change, but how we deliver it is a bigger question. Few leaders have done more to shape that conversation than those that are joining me today. It is my honor and pleasure to invite to the stage the UN Deputy Secretary General, Amina Mohammed. Next to me, please. and the co-chairs of the UN Secretary General's SDG advocates, Prime Minister of Barbados, Her Excellency Mia Mottley, and the Prime Minister of Spain, His Excellency Pedro Sanchez. Prime Minister. Come in there. Last but not least, good to see you again, good to see you again. Okay, let's put the I will just say to the Prime Minister of Spain, the last time he was in the New York, New Jersey region, Spain was winning the World Cup against FIFA. And I hope you will bring that Spanish enthusiasm to the conversation we intend to have today. Welcome. So it's, I don't really have that card. Prime Minister Motley, let's begin with you. The commitments are there from Bridgetown to Seville. What's the single biggest obstacle standing between the reforms agreed on paper and money reaching the people who need it?

Political will.

I was going to say, don't say political will.

But it is. Where there's a will, there's a way. And quite frankly, it is the absence of that will that is causing the problem. Look, last year, we left the UN General Assembly with a view that we had to create some concrete action. We read the tea leaves and we realized, Amina, I'm sorry, that SDGs was causing a geopolitical allergic reaction for many. And we said, look, let's back down to basics. What are we really trying to do? We're trying to educate people, children. We're trying to give people access to health care. And we have a crisis with clean water being necessary to be made available to as many people as possible. We can't boil the ocean. Let's take these three and go. We met with members of the Arab Cooperation League and put it to them and said, do you really want to change the system? And mercifully, The OPEC Fund for International Development stepped up to the plate, brought along the others from the Arab Cooperation League. We then went to both, spoke to the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, Caribbean Development Bank, Latin American Development Bank. And in Vienna in June, 16 countries, sorry, 16 financial institutions got together with 74 countries of the world in the V20 countries and signed the Vulnerability to Viability Compact, which is about amplifying the amount of money that we have at lower rates of interest for longer periods of time. Jeff Sachs, you have been calling Jeffrey for this for the longest time, so that we can get 40 and 50 year money to build schools and fix and build hospitals and to replace water mains. We go to Bangkok with a view now, having signed that compact in Vienna, to try to make that a reality through concrete actions. That is what Sevilla was all about. That is what Bridgetown agitated for. That's what Amina spent the last, what, how many decades, more than that, from the MDGs to the SDGs. And what we've just tried to do is to bring it back to a human face. People need schools, people need clinics, People need water.

Is political will, though, not a very broad term that sort of-- are you not talking about specific leaders or specific areas where political will is required? Because you are demonstrating political will. The prime minister is demonstrating political will. So who is responsible for the lack of political will? Maybe we should go there.

Regrettably, there are not enough North Atlantic and G20 countries who are making that difference, and in particular, Probably the G7 have to answer for a lot more. But at the same time, the other countries, China, Russia, all of them can't absolve themselves from the discussion. And the reality is that we are trying to pat ourselves on the back and saying, oh, because it's a poly crisis moment, we can't apply resources there. But we can fight wars, we can get new machinery, we can do everything else. We can justify why interest rates should go up and compensate a few people who are earning extraordinary It's at the very time when they should be showing mercy and not a Shylockian approach to life.

Prime Minister Sanchez, what do we need financially to make the Sustainable Development Goals more effective and achievable in the years that remain before 2030? And they're not many. So...

No, no, no. I mean, of course we need that political will, Mia said. And I think that Seville was, I think, a very important step to move forward in this direction. You know that in in Sevilla we launched 130 commitments, specific actions, and so far we tracked progress more or less about 100 of these actions. So for instance, this initiative of the debt post close alliance of course, the debt swap for financing development, and of course, the Sevilla Club for Action in order to meet and to try to create synergies with other countries. And I think that the other item that I would like to highlight is the need, a clear need, especially today that we listen different speeches talking about the contrary, the opposite, I think it's very important to keep the idea that we need to cooperate more internationally when we tax. tax corporations, tax super rich people. I think that these are the ideas that we agreed upon in Seville and these are the commitments that we need to deliver if we want to have these resources in order to reach the SDGs goals.

So basically, just for the benefit of the people in the room, the Seville commitments, they took the Bridgetown Initiative, the political momentum that was created there further It created a broader UN negotiated framework, expanding development bank lending, improving debt relief, strengthening tax cooperation, mobilizing private capital, and redirecting special drawing rights. That terminology that came to the fore during the COVID-19 pandemic. It has some weaknesses, and often the weaknesses are always implementation, right? DSG, from the UN's perspective, right? You want to talk about implementation, we can get there. Where do you see the greatest opportunity right now to turn momentum on financing reform into measurable progress?

Momentum in Africa, because we have been talking about the financing architecture and what we need to do to change that, and SVEA did a huge amount to put some of the key elements of what needs to happen, whether it's with the MDBs, it's with the private sector, it's with trying to get capital across. The African Development Bank, together with other institutions, said, "Okay, we need actually an African financing framework." In the world, we're talking about $4 trillion for the SDGs, $2.7 trillion in is being spent, as Mayor just said, now on conflict. But the trillions outside of the continent and other instruments, other institutions, is now what the continent is talking about bringing back. Bringing back so that the assets that you find in Africa can now be invested in. So that, for me, gives me confidence that for the first time, African institutions are not waiting for a prescription. The second is that the private sector there has decided that actually we're going to seed our wealth in Africa, not outside of the continent. And that's being done by a wealthy billionaire there who is getting traction because suddenly everybody's looking to, so if he's made so much money, he's now vesting that opportunity on the continent.

The Nigerian billionaire.

Of course, I come from Nigeria, you know. Nigerian billionaire. But I think what is capturing the imagination there is the sale of the IPO that he did the other day to the ordinary person who now sees that they also have ownership of what is now going to be a huge amount of development for them. It's going to be jobs. It is going to be a chance that people will hope to get past the conflict because there's an alternative. There are lots of TikTok jokes and cartoons about him that show him asking a poor person, why are you touching my vehicle? You know, the truck that carries the petroleum. And the poor person's just saying to him, it's our truck. So people feel an ownership in that business. If we could translate that, now this is where it gets complicated. Political will for me is about leadership. And there are very few leaders who've got the opportunity to do things are doing anything about it, and the ones that don't have the opportunity is where all the leadership is. But here, I think that we need to see every citizen say that to their leaders, that, you know, we have a shareholding in this entity called Nigeria. And in response to that, you've got to deliver. And this has to happen in sufficient number of countries, particularly in those that have and are just closing the doors to try to open them up. The financing needs to open up. We have frameworks, we have goals, we have toolboxes. There's nothing that we don't have. Jeffrey Sachs has been at this for the best part of, I don't know, 40, 50 years, but of recent, at least the 10 years on the SDGs. The SDGs spoke to us having inclusive economies, and it's about the economy. If you can't grow an economy, you will not get the revenue to pay for a health system. You can't keep borrowing for that from ODA that's gone down by 28%. You need to invest in infrastructure, you need to invest in power, you need to invest in what will kick that economy so that they can get the revenues to do what they should basically do as rights and then everyone will get started. I know we'll talk about AI later, but I just want to talk about the opportunity of that. But right now, I think Africa is showing the way on the finance and it's taken that leaf from severe. It's taken that leaf from Bridgetown because we tackle the MDBs. We tackled the IMF.

So essentially, it's about the economy, stupid, right? Always. It's always about the economy. Prime Minister Sanchez, looking back at severe, what's the one lesson that should change how we approach financing next, especially with military spending rising and geopolitical tensions deepening? What needs to change about how we finance the SDGs.

Well, to me, the political priorities, I mean, I think that precisely in the Western societies, in Western countries and governments, now, I come from a country, Spain, that belongs to the European Union. Of course, we have the threat of Russia and the war in Ukraine. But of course, you know, we are against not only that illegal war, but the war in Iran. And of course, what is going on in Gaza in Palestine. So I think that first of all, we need to change our political priorities in Western societies. And for that, we need governments more engaged on global issues, but also societies that understand that geopolitics also affects directly to their daily lives. And then I feel, and this is my My biggest concern is that more and more, since we have this rearming rhetoric, we are forgetting to be engaged on global matters that affect us. also when it comes to, for instance, migration, we need also to cooperate with countries of origin and transit, but not only regarding migration, but the economic development of these countries. So I can give a lot of examples, but I would say that the biggest lesson that to me was Seville. It was a light to change political priorities, especially when it comes to Western societies and Western governments.

I saw the wheels turning, but let me ask you this first. You've been one of the leading voices, Prime Minister Motley, on calling for reform of the global financial system. Looking ahead, where should leaders focus their energy now, changing the rules or changing the incentives that determine where capital flows?

The reality is that I don't think we're going to see what we want happen in one fell swoop. We're going to see incremental changes we've been doing. I'd like it to be far greater. But against that backdrop, I think leaders need to be taking action where they can. And that's why I said that the debt swaps, you referred to them just now, Barbados has successfully managed two debt swaps. It's now doing its third debt swap. In fact, we're doing the first debt for social swap that will conclude on the 31st of December, where we've brought four multilateral development banks together to work with us to repurchase 600 million US of our debt. And the savings from that is 150 million US, which would be applied across a three-year to the health institutions of the country. We're also using and insisting that the debt clauses be used. The debt pause clause alliance that Pedro spoke about is real. Look, everybody told us, oh, you're going to get that from concessional loans, etcetera, but the market will never give it to you. We went to the market last year in June and we raised 500 million US dollars and we got debt pause and pandemic clauses in those bonds raised on the international market having done road from Boston to New York to London to Paris. So we have to stop believing that these things are impossible. And if leaders can take action where they can, then that inspires others to believe that we can actually have this integrated across the place. The V2V compact is so important because you cannot pay But for serious institutions with 10 and 12 year money. And I keep making the point that home ownership became revolutionized when people had access to mortgages because they were borrowing at terms and conditions that were reflective of the life of the asset. It's common sense. So I can't get away from the absence of the political will. But equally, I know that once you can claim territory where you can, the longest mile begins with what? The first step. And we just have to show what is possible. And equally, why the V2V comeback is so important. It's the global south that effectively started it to work with the global south. And it shows that what is possible. How in all conscience can you charge people more interest rates because they are greater risk? That's exactly when you should be helping them. And it runs contrary to every single religion that we have.

I think that's an applause line. If no one was paying attention, I would just-- DSG, for too many countries, progress still feels out of reach. What will it take to turn today's financing commitments into results that people can actually see and feel? I mean, that is essentially the point of the SDGs, is it not?

It is, but it comes back to the means of implementation. I mean, we sort of got the needle stuck, right, so we know exactly what we need to do. And I think perhaps the narrative needs to change as to why we shouldn't do it. There's always an excuse as to why there's too much risk and who's going to take the risk and how are we going to raise the capital.

And those credit ratings agencies?

And credit rating agencies that also need a few lessons. And I think that's begun. We had put a big spotlight on credit rating agencies again through the SIVs. And I think now they are coming to stable, not as much as they should, the top three, but Africa says, "I'm not waiting think we're going to launch a credit rating agency. Is that going to solve the problem? Probably not. There's over 100 of them. But it will start to task those who have held everyone to ransom about how we're going to do this. And I think that if you look at the domestic resources that our countries use, that's the vast amount of resources being used for development right now. It's just not enough. And how we scale that has been the big question. How we actually put the footprint of the international community in countries to help them start to look at the policy and the regulatory environments and all those issues that we quite frankly don't tackle and target the G20 or target the G7. We do it for climate, this is where the emissions are, so these are the countries that we're negotiating with, so why do we not do that on the finance front? Often those rooms developing countries are locked out of might be there in the G 20, but in the G 20, these are a couple of pretty big countries, right, that are from the south. The G seven needs to be, you know, they need to take this on. And, you know, often people are not in those rooms. And yet they have so much impact within the financial system, within the multilateral development banks. So I don't think that we can get the I don't think we can get those resources without some changes really being made where it requires not just the political leadership, but some leaders as we had a decade or so ago in the financial crisis to take some decisions. We've had it with the SDRs, there are one or two countries that did that, but somehow that last mile of additional did not happen. So who are going to be the advocates of a new narrative that actually that four, five billion people that we talk about matter? And if you look at the rhetoric or the speeches we had in the hall today, it's very worrying. It's worrying that in the United Nations today that we will have speech that will come out with talking about the annihilation of people in an institution that was set up off the back of a war to have no more wars and to have peace. So, what are we thinking about? And we're talking about the SDGs, 2030 is around the corner. So when you tell me the financing, the financing is in the hands of too few and it needs to get out.

I will just say I come from a country that has recently been excluded from the room and referring to the G20, but that's a conversation for another time. DSG, let me just linger with you, but there's growing momentum around measuring progress beyond GDP. If we made that shift, what should change and how about how we define and finance a successful SDG agenda?

Well, the SDG agenda, the core of it has got our transitions to a greener, bluer, turquoise environment. I mean, sustainability, right? And sustainability today is rewarded by GDP, where fossil fuel is, that's, you get rewarded for it. So what we're trying to say is to bring in those issues that are for sustainability, bring in wellbeing, bringing all the issues that at the end of the day is about human dignity. And the price on that today is too high because we are measuring in a manner in which gives incentives for what we shouldn't be doing. And what we need is disincentives, and the GDP plus is lots of disincentives for what's not so good.

I will say we've got about four minutes and 30 seconds left. Let's see how much we can get through. Prime Minister Markley, many people hear discussions about debt restructuring, special drawing rights, multilateral development bank reform, and they struggle to connect them to daily life. How do these reforms ultimately translate into tangible benefits for people, whether through jobs, resilience, economic opportunity, or stronger public services?

Very clearly. If I have to build a hospital. with 15-year money, it means that my debt repayments for that hospital are much more than they should be. It means that I then have to choose what I can do and what I can't do. And that is the explanation that we have to give our people so that they understand that what we're fighting for is really about creating more opportunities for them in terms of education, healthcare, jobs, et cetera. We have to be able to get that space because we can always bring back down debt overnight, but we can't reverse if generation that has been lost overnight, they're gone. So that we don't have that luxury. And I think that we have to be able to be very, very clear that what we're doing is not an academic discussion. And that's why taking the tangible steps that we're doing with the V2V, trying to get longer, cheaper money for education, health, and water is so important. Now, that's not going to cover all of the SDGs, but it's going to carry us a large and long way being able to make progress. And that is real for my citizens and the rest of the citizens of the world.

I would argue, Prime Minister, that you're a very good communicator. So I wonder just how, as you've just done, connecting those dots to people.

300 million instead of 300,000.

But for the people--.

Because that's when I can make a difference. And Amina made the point. The problem is, is that where leadership is coming from the global south, they don't have the capacity or the power. And there's a power imbalance. And if you want me to be very precise and very brutal, the same men's rear that spawned slavery is the same men's rear that is maintaining the imbalance in the global environment, maintaining the imbalance in the power structure in this organization, maintaining the imbalance in the power structure in the national financial institution. How can you tell me there's a right to have a Security Council that don't have a representative from Africa as of right, or don't have a representative from the small island developing states that constitute one quarter of the world's states? Something is fundamentally wrong and we all know it, but what are we doing about it?

Speaking to you and amplifying that around the world.

Speaking to the media, advocacy. But at the end of the day, go to the rules and see where the rules are changed. And the rules are only changed when those who have access to power do it, or you get a moment like the let them eat bread moment, let them eat cakes moment, when people stand up and recognize that we're no longer listening to a handful of people who have excluded us from the conversation and that we have nothing to lose. When it gets to that point, we're risking danger. And that's why this whole conversation at the end of the day, whether it is global inequality, whether it is AI that will consolidate potentially the inequity, even while promising to create opportunities for other people. These are real things that cannot be decided by the power brokers who get the interest and make the money and the profits to the exclusion of everybody else in the world. This is a global conversation and people cannot be excluded from it.

So from the French Revolution to this question, Prime Minister, and I'm going to allow you to end with a flourish. We've got 55 seconds left. As we get closer to 2030, should our focus be solely, and it's an interesting question, should it be solely on accelerating delivery towards that deadline on today's agenda, or is it time to start preparing for what comes next?

Both. No, I think that we have to deliver. Four years in politics is a universe, so we need to focus. And of course, the causes of fighting against inequality, gender equality, green transition, climate change, these are causes that will go beyond 2030. But to me, I will echo what Mia said. I think it's very important to know that this is a political battle, not an ideological one, but a political one. Because many times we find people and political representatives that say, oh, this Agenda 2030 is for the global elite. And precisely is the contrary. this is the agenda for ordinary people. And I think that, you know, with concrete examples and with concrete policies, we have to fight against this narrative. And by the way, this Agenda 2030 is not only for, you know, countries less developed, but also in Western societies, we need the Agenda 2030 domestically. And this is something that we need to also expand this message to create this partnership with the academia, with business people, with trade unions, with civil society in order to expand the message within Western societies that the Agenda 2030 is for the good of the ordinary people, also from those societies.

I really want to see you, because we talked about political will and the way to go but he has lived it and he's shown it. Sevilla only happened because he was supportive of Sevilla happening. The manner in which he is treating the migrants in Spain is only because he has the political will to treat them differently. And he is therefore showing by the way in which he's walking that it is possible to do the right thing while at the same time providing for your citizens and making sure that the declining and aging populations of Europe do not undermine the growth potential of Europe.

I've been given an extra two minutes to talk about AI, so maybe we'll go down. down the panel. Prime Minister, you want to start? There's no question. I mean, where does AI lead you?

I will answer with a question. Okay.

You want to go first? Okay.

In 20th century, we wouldn't allow the private company to own a nuclear arsenal. Are we going to do that in the 21st century with the tool AI, this intelligence? and its implications, not only economically, but social and security implications for all humanity. That is the big question that we need to answer.

So if it was a car, we need a seatbelt.

No, we need regulation. Joseph Stiglitz made, I think, a very good point in his last article in the Financial Times. He said, look, we need an agenda for AI, which means competition, regulation, and redistribution. And I agree with that.

And I would only add to that, that at the time when we have the global town hall, for us to leave New York, without agreeing in the same way that we have done. We're not going to get every country on earth, but we need to be able to have the majority of countries saying, we agree that there must be regulation. We put a task force to get the framework for it, and that we are urging every country by the end of this year to put their domestic regulations in place without prejudice to what can be agreed to internationally.

Final word, DC.

So the UN is doing something about it. I think we faced a huge pushback from people we never expected it from to bring the governance in here, to bring the science in here, and to bring the dialogue. And more recently, what does it mean to be human in the age of AI? Better still, as we are meeting here now, the Security Council is meeting on AI. And I think that that has happened over the last week when there have been all these signals that this is not something that you would just give to a few companies. We had a nuclear treaty, we need an AI treaty. And that's what's being discussed right now downstairs. We were asking, inviting all those tech companies to come to the UN for the GA a couple of weeks ago. They were not coming. But they're here now, and they're in the Security Council. And I think that that's a huge step forward. And it just underscores how important multilateralism is, that when we cannot find and we need to pull together as a world to find a response to these huge challenges, this is where it happens. So I'm hopeful. And I hope that downstairs, they will come out with something that we go home with, that we can begin to work on. That conversation wasn't here a week ago. It is today. Good old UN.

Good old UN. I have to ask. You don't have a mic. We don't have a mic for you.

He doesn't need one.

I'm not mic'd, but I want to say these.

Are-- Professor Jeffrey Sachs, everybody.

-Three finest leaders that we have. And every one of them has taken incredible risks. And incredible-- These are the three finest leaders we have. Every one of them has taken incredible risks. every day and including this year and this month, and we depend on them for what they're doing. The majority is there in this world, in fact, the vast majority. But you saw the opponent this morning. So I would use a different word. The two words is not political will, but United States. This is a serious problem. But the vast majority of the world wants peace. wants the UN to function, wants the development agenda to be fulfilled, wants the climate change to be addressed, wants safety for the people of the world. We have a political obstacle. We don't lack the political will, and we have great political leaders, and the three best are here. So thank you.

All that's left for me to say is this. Prime Minister Markley, Prime Minister Sanchez, Deputy Secretary General, Mina Mohammed, thank you for a rich discussion. We've heard about the importance of turning momentum into implementation, ensuring that financing reaches where it is needed most, and keeping people at the center of efforts to reform the global financial system. Thank you for joining us, and thank you for the rich discussion. See you back here tomorrow, same time. Thank you, thank you.